The Descendants

The Descendants is one of those movies that are obviously tailored to garner critical acclaim. They take a tried-and-true plot (my wife is cheating on me!), add a unique tragic twist to it (but she's in a coma!), take an actor that's very good at both drama and comedy (George Clooney) and put him as the lead, and unleash it upon the viewing public in the last couple of months leading up to Oscar voting. It's a formulaic process that Hollywood goes through every fall and winter, but it doesn't make it any less enjoyable to watch.

Although I knew The Descendants would be good, I had no idea it would be this well-done. One of the things that jumped out at me the most was how perfectly the movie was cast. Clooney plays Matt King, a Hawaiian lawyer with the weight of the world on his shoulders, juggling work, family, and the tragic news that his wife is dying. His older, troubled daughter is played by Shailene Woodley, who I had only known from the commercials to The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Knowing her only from that made me cringe at first, but after about 30 seconds of screentime, I understood perfectly why she was put in this movie. Clooney and Woodley play incredibly well off of one another, skirting the line between rebellious animosity and familial codependency with an amazing sense of honesty.

The story, like I said, is standard-fare Oscar screenwriting: formulaic, but good. It flows very well from one instance to the next, developing all three of King's struggles fairly evenly without losing the audience. It drags a little in parts, and some of the scenes can be a bit cliche, but it's overall a very solid storyline. The cinematography is unique in that it captures Hawaii from the point of view of the characters. At the beginning of the movie, King states that the beauty of Hawaii becomes the norm, and it gets kind of lost on the people that live there. The cinematography captures this by showing the beauty of the setting, but not overemphasizing on it until the moment is right.

Overall, The Descendants is a fantastic film. It could have been a little tighter in the middle, but overall, I think it's a huge contender for Best Picture. I give it 9 awkward father-daughter confrontations out of 10.